WASHINGTON — The United States is negotiating deals with European countries to exchange fingerprint and DNA data in criminal and terrorist cases and, in some circumstances, transfer data on race or ethnic origin, political and religious beliefs or sexual orientation.
Such pacts are a condition for granting citizens of newer European Union states the right to enter the United States without visas, and for maintaining that right for older EU members.
U.S. citizens already enjoy such a right when traveling to Europe.
Bush administration officials said the data exchange is crucial for spotting dangerous people before they enter the United States and for furthering criminal and terrorist probes.
The United States and EU have been negotiating a separate, broad agreement on commercial data protection. But European privacy officials are concerned that the emerging bilateral pacts will not adequately protect people’s privacy. And U.S. privacy advocates are concerned about the potential transfer of sensitive information on U.S. citizens to Europe.
The bilateral pacts augment the airline passenger record agreement reached last year with the EU, which requires airlines flying here from abroad to transfer data on passengers to U.S. security agencies.
They complement a series of bilateral agreements to exchange screening data on known or suspected terrorists, which exclude data on race, religious beliefs and other sensitive items.
“European governments are entering into these agreements much more readily than they were four, five years ago, because concerns about terrorism are no longer confined to one side of the Atlantic,” said Stewart Baker, assistant secretary for policy at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
But some European lawmakers fear that, taken together, the accords will lead to a far-reaching exchange of personal data without appropriate safeguards and that eventually the United States will seek access to databases that cover all of Europe.
